Brethren - Chapter 2

Brethren - Chapter 2

Balael awoke with the scream of a man who had died and been resurrected in the same breath. His bedchamber loomed around him, cold and dark, suddenly a place of threat. His eyes darted around the large room, taking in every detail, every shape and shadow of morning. He was soaked with sweat, and an old scar beneath his right eye stung with fresh tears.

Elenna, his wife, was not at his side. At once the most painful nightmare of his life returned to him like a flood, threatening to drown him in fear. He flew from his bed and bolted down the curving stone steps to the rest of his home. The main chamber opened cavernously before him, beautiful in the morning light, but silent as death.
There was no one there, and so with haste he ran to the first of a row of arched windows to view the main balcony. Far beneath him the city of Aramondria sprawled colossal, stretching out far into the distance, a great expanse of rich golds and reds. Normally, the morning cast so fair a light upon the city that its architecture appeared to Balael to take on a life of its own, the mineral rich rock of its ever reaching towers and mammoth halls serving to imbue the entire scene with a soft and shifting glow. Now however, the endless city sprawl filled him with a momentary dread, a myriad of horrible possibilities, and a whole world into which gaping maw his family could so easily have been swallowed.

His heart gladly dispelled such thoughts into the ether of memory as he looked down to the balcony. There, playing with a small wooden horse he had made for her, sat little Yena, his gem of innocence, his only child. All sparkling eyes and ringlets, she walked the horse back and fore, its path continuing unheeded in her young mind.

Balael felt the fear seeping away from him into the morning haze. His heart began to slow, his breathing steadying. So engrossed was he in sudden relief that he failed to notice that she was alone. She looked so pure, so safe in the warming light.

As he ran towards the door leading down, his foot caught something laid across the floor, and he fell hard to the ground. As he recomposed himself, he looked down to see what had tripped him, and for the second time that day he was gripped, hard and without warning, with the deepest of terrors.

There on the floor lay Dashia, his house’s serving girl, clothes soaked incarnadine, unmoving.

Balael had seen more corpses in his life than could be counted, many of them made so by his own hand. For what it might mean for his family though, this seemed to him by far the most morbid, the most coldly and sickeningly cadaverous. He wretched, feeling the fear return with new and violent strength, pounding at his gut. At once the lifeless form at his feet became that of his daughter in his mind’s eye; her body, her blood, her face. It took every vestige of strength, every battle earned ounce of warrior’s will to bring him to his feet, to return his eyes to the window, to look down to the balcony once more.

Yena continued to play, unaware of the grizzly fate of her beloved nanny. At that moment she looked curiously across to the far side of the balcony, out of Balael’s view, and her eyes widened. Balael moved to the next window along to see what had so fixated her.

A tall man approached her purposefully, dressed in black, a smooth mask covering his face. As soon as he saw him, Balael knew that he would kill him. Even if his daughter escaped unharmed, letting him live seemed unthinkable. The father within him burned with rage, a rage over which the general in him, the strategist, held no command. As Balael sprinted to the door leading down to the balcony, he made sure not to shout out, not to warn the intruder of his presence. He knew he could get there in time, for it was the father driving him forward, charging him with whatever impetus was needed to bring him to his child.

Balael crashed through the door without opening it, snapping it clean off its hinges. As splinters of wood peppered the steps and balcony below, the man in black looked up. For a moment he halted his advance, fingertips playing nervously with the hilt of a long silver dagger at his belt. Balael roared his warning unto the very Walls of the World, his fear evaporated, the general once more at the forefront. His voice was like a gathering storm.

“One step nearer that child will be the end of you stranger.” His eyes bulged, bloodshot and full of threat.

The hand of the masked intruder began to shake violently. He looked at Balael, then at Yena, then back to Balael. Balael was roughly the same distance from his daughter as the intruder, and Balael that knew he was thinking the same thing. He would sprint for her and use her as shield against him, use her to escape with his life. Sure enough, as though at the crack of his masters whip, the man in black made his move, leaping forwards toward Yena at full speed. Balael descended the stairs in one movement, hitting the ground at a run. Yena beamed at the sight of her father, and the wooden horse fell to the floor as she reached out for him.

The man in black was fast, but Balael was faster, and as the two men grew quickly nearer, it became apparent that he would reach his daughter first. Appearing to sense this, the man in black drew his dagger, and as he came within jumping distance of the child he leaped forward, dagger first, its cruel point aimed squarely at her tiny frame. Balael drew in a sharp breath at the sight of his daughter in such mortal danger, his powerful legs pounding the stone beneath them with all their might. Why would he attack with the dagger? If he killed her, that would be the end of him, his one chance of survival gone. He had to know that.

Balael’s confusion was quickly overtaken by adrenaline, and a final searing burst of speed brought him within inches of the assailant. As the two men collided almost above her, Yena looked up at them, laughing her tinny little laugh, as though it was all some boisterous game.

Balael struck the man hard in the ribs with his shoulder, ducking low and rising up at the last moment before contact. Several loud cracks announced the thunderous blow. The man, tall but slight, was flung several feet through the air. Balael had lost his footing upon striking him and fallen to the floor with a roll. He looked up again just in time to see the morning light flash upon a silver buckle as the masked attacker struck the balcony, his speed propelling him over it into the crisp, boundless air beyond.

For a moment Balael stood in silence, rooted to the spot, his mind allowing his body a moment’s respite. Yena was too young by far to understand the reality of what had happened. Nevertheless, the sight of the man in black disappearing silently over the edge, and the look on her fathers face was enough to strike a chord of empathy in her young heart. She began to cry uncontrollably, and it was this sound that awoke Balael from his reverie.

Not allowing himself a moment more to dwell upon the scene that was surely beginning to unravel below, he swept his daughter up into his arms and hugged her tight. Relief enveloped him, like the silken wings of an angel, and he wept openly. Sensing her father’s fragility, Yena cried all the harder, until her dress was stained with tears both young and old. Balael held her out in front of him and looked into her welling eyes; saw her innocence, her potential. At that moment, for one of very few in his life, he felt a deep and honest gratitude, and he smiled. Yena stopped crying in an instant, and smiled back. Her eyes had always been his, a dark and misty blue, but her smile; that had always been her mothers.
Her mother.

And it all fell apart. At the flash of a smile, the fear was reborn, stronger for its absence, darker for its returning to a brighter mind. Somewhere far below, a woman screamed.

* * *

From some lofty and secret place, a dark figure cast darker eyes to the winding streets below. A crowd had gathered around the corpse like red eyed rats, eager for blood. Those shadowy eyes had watched him fall, watched him die without blinking. Blinking was a waste of sight, especially when there was something to be seen.
Behind those eyes, a cold mind fell painfully short of compassion. Long, pale fingers clutched something, something bright and precious. The figure slowly turned, and whispered quietly to the shadows.
“All for you.”

* * *


A cold wind crept across the balcony. Setting his daughter down, Balael knelt to the floor on weakened knees. He spoke to her loudly and with urgency.

“Yena, where is your mother?”

Yena stared silently up at him, her lip beginning to quiver. Balael raised his voice slightly, trying hard not to scare her.

“Yena, you must tell me where your mother is. Where is she?”

Though she knew the words full well, her father’s cold expression was not one she had seen before. It scared her, and she didn’t understand.

Seeing the fear in his daughter’s eyes, Balael knelt closer, and gathering every ounce of paternal strength to the surface, he managed a smile.

“Mother” he said slowly, in brighter tones than he had thought himself capable.

Yena’s face warmed, and after a moments thought, she managed a reply.

“Flowers” she said proudly, expecting praise from her father. Instead, she was swept up once more and carried quickly out of the morning light and into the house. Balael held his daughter tight to his chest as he raced to the bedchamber, where this had all begun in darkness and dream just minutes before. Setting her down on the edge of the bed, he began to frantically rummage through an old jewellery box. At length, he produced an intricate marble key, the four swords insignia of the Arteminas household engraved upon its head. Racing to the other side of the room he inserted the key into a large plated chest, which open with a series of loud clicks. He removed something long and wrapped in silks from the bottom of the chest, and lying it down beside him beckoned Yena come to his side. She looked at him with glassy eyes, and he smiled and held her tiny hands in his.

“Yena, we’re going to play a game. I’m going to go and find your mother, and then we’re going to play hide and seek.”

She beamed.

“I think the best place for you to hide would be this big old chest, but you’d have to be really really quiet. Do you think you can do that?”

She nodded vigorously, her fears forgotten.

“Now you get on in, and when I bring your mother up to look for you, you’re not going to make a sound are you?”

She shook her head and almost jumped in to the chest. Balael gave her his biggest smile as he kissed her on the forehead and began to shut the chest.

“I love you” he whispered as the top came down, and Yena giggled to herself.
As soon as he had turned the key and locked his daughter safely away, Balael’s face turned to stone. He turned to the item he had removed and began to unwrap it from its silken sheath. Feeling the cold steel of the blade’s hilt on his palms imbued him with strength, and as he left his daughter alone in the chamber, he felt sure he would return to her.